LAD #26: Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' Speech

Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech"
March, 1963
Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

The audience for Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech" could not have been more astounding. Delivering his speech to over 200,000 civil rights supporters, King shared his message of hope with the dream that one day all would share his vision of equality.

Although Abraham Lincoln had given the Emancipation Proclamation a century prior to this speech, King believed that the Negro population still lived under oppression in the United States, and have suffered for enough time. He called from the Negro to rise and walk with the white man, with the goal that one day they would all live freely and happily together, under the idea that "all men are created equal."

With their journey toward equality already begun, Martin Luther King Jr. claimed that there was no turning back and no giving up. He dreamt that the American nation would one day allow its citizens to live together without segregation or hatred, and that even his children would not "be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

With a now greater meaning to it, he closed his speech by quoting the Negro spiritual:
"Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty we are free at last!"